Welcome to the Humanities teacher wikispace - a 'filing cabinet' and a space for 'works in progress' for the SAS Pudong Grade 8 Humanities course. It provides an excellent medium for discussion, and collaborative learning and design. Do feel free to add any resources, ideas, lesson plans (whatever you like). Add yourself to the Contributors page and let's build this curriculum together.
On this site, you will find current unit outlines, teacher notes, lesson warm-ups and topic prompts. The 2008-2009 topics are listed on the navigation page on the left. We are also using this space to develop ideas for 'scope and sequence' documents for specific areas such as writing across the middle school.
The curriculum is by no means finished. We have experimented, 'tweaked', revised, and the curriculum continues to evolve. The focus is on making content, skills and experiences as authentic as possible, to prepare our students for the 21st century. It also allows for teachers to individualize their instruction, and to integrate their own ideas and materials within the framework of standards and benchmarks, themes and enduring understandings.
This site is private and not open to the public, nor can it be viewed by the public. It is open only to members. We have not opened it to students.
The Humanities program at SAS Pudong Middle School integrates Language Arts and Social Studies. Click here to listen to a podcast that explains the philosophy behind this program. You will be taken to the SAS website - just scroll down the page to 'Middle School Coffee September 2007', and click on the mp3 file. The presentation was accompanied by the slides below:
This program of instruction was specifically designed and tailored to meet the needs of Grade 8 students here at SAS. For a more detailed explanation, look at 'Writing curriculum' under Approaches.
Standards and Benchmarks
Our curriculum has been created using the SAS Middle School Standards and Benchmarks for Grade 8 Language Arts and Social Studies as a foundation. These standards and benchmarks are the required framework. The themes and enduring understandings were chosen with the aim of allowing students to engage with and work towards achieving the SAS Expected School-wide Learning Results, or ESLRs, otherwise referred to as the EAGLES .
Using the curriculum
The themes, class texts and the sequence of themes have been used in 2008 - 2009. In order to ensure continuity of approach, the enduring understandings and some of the assessments are the same across the Humanities classes. However, within each class, the sequence of activities, and the case studies that allow students to investigate concepts can be changed to suit the teacher. Suggestions for these are also given in the 'Teacher Notes' that accompany each Theme. As you will see in the material created for each of the themes, a common unit framework was set up but each teacher also developed their own complementary activities to suit their individual teaching styles. The unit framework acts as a base.
Assessment
We are currently discussing assessment approaches. This year we developed 4 criteria from the amalgamation of the Language Arts and Social Studies standards and benchmarks. See the draft version of this below:
The assessments were then designed with a view to developing student understanding of these criteria. While each assessment tends to connect to each criterion, it is more effective for student learning to focus on specific aspects of one or two of the 4 criteria when assessing a product. See below for examples:
This year, as teachers of Grade 8 Humanities, we have some common assessments, and we have covered the same skills. However, though our rubrics are essentially assessing the same processes, teachers have developed individual methods for arriving at the 'number' that we then note down in Gradequick for the summative percentage grade. This may be seen in the above rubrics.
Grammar
Each theme is complemented by grammar activities that are based on the subject matter so that they are contextualized rather than seen in isolation.
Note - This year, teachers have created their own activities, using class sets of texts and photocopied worksheets.The plan is to eventually create complementary vocabulary and grammar booklets for each theme, that can be used as a common base by each teacher, and will enable the program to meet the requirements of Standard III, 'Grammar and Mechanics' in Language Arts.
American History
Every effort has been taken to ensure that US History runs as a thread throughout the entire course. The themes require case studies and these studies are specifically chosen with a view to contextualizing content such as Exploration, Colonial Government, The American Revolution, First Nations, Immigration and the Space Race.
Table of Contents
Overview
Welcome to the Humanities teacher wikispace - a 'filing cabinet' and a space for 'works in progress' for the SAS Pudong Grade 8 Humanities course. It provides an excellent medium for discussion, and collaborative learning and design. Do feel free to add any resources, ideas, lesson plans (whatever you like). Add yourself to the Contributors page and let's build this curriculum together.On this site, you will find current unit outlines, teacher notes, lesson warm-ups and topic prompts. The 2008-2009 topics are listed on the navigation page on the left. We are also using this space to develop ideas for 'scope and sequence' documents for specific areas such as writing across the middle school.
The curriculum is by no means finished. We have experimented, 'tweaked', revised, and the curriculum continues to evolve. The focus is on making content, skills and experiences as authentic as possible, to prepare our students for the 21st century. It also allows for teachers to individualize their instruction, and to integrate their own ideas and materials within the framework of standards and benchmarks, themes and enduring understandings.
This site is private and not open to the public, nor can it be viewed by the public. It is open only to members. We have not opened it to students.
Wikispaces has provided this facility free of charge to any teacher setting up a site for K12 education.
The Humanities program at SAS Pudong Middle School integrates Language Arts and Social Studies. Click here to listen to a podcast that explains the philosophy behind this program. You will be taken to the SAS website - just scroll down the page to 'Middle School Coffee September 2007', and click on the mp3 file. The presentation was accompanied by the slides below:
This program of instruction was specifically designed and tailored to meet the needs of Grade 8 students here at SAS. For a more detailed explanation, look at 'Writing curriculum' under Approaches.
Standards and Benchmarks
Our curriculum has been created using the SAS Middle School Standards and Benchmarks for Grade 8 Language Arts and Social Studies as a foundation. These standards and benchmarks are the required framework. The themes and enduring understandings were chosen with the aim of allowing students to engage with and work towards achieving the SAS Expected School-wide Learning Results, or ESLRs, otherwise referred to as the EAGLES .Using the curriculum
The themes, class texts and the sequence of themes have been used in 2008 - 2009. In order to ensure continuity of approach, the enduring understandings and some of the assessments are the same across the Humanities classes. However, within each class, the sequence of activities, and the case studies that allow students to investigate concepts can be changed to suit the teacher. Suggestions for these are also given in the 'Teacher Notes' that accompany each Theme. As you will see in the material created for each of the themes, a common unit framework was set up but each teacher also developed their own complementary activities to suit their individual teaching styles. The unit framework acts as a base.Assessment
We are currently discussing assessment approaches. This year we developed 4 criteria from the amalgamation of the Language Arts and Social Studies standards and benchmarks. See the draft version of this below:
The assessments were then designed with a view to developing student understanding of these criteria. While each assessment tends to connect to each criterion, it is more effective for student learning to focus on specific aspects of one or two of the 4 criteria when assessing a product. See below for examples:
Fay's class
Susannah's class
This year, as teachers of Grade 8 Humanities, we have some common assessments, and we have covered the same skills. However, though our rubrics are essentially assessing the same processes, teachers have developed individual methods for arriving at the 'number' that we then note down in Gradequick for the summative percentage grade. This may be seen in the above rubrics.
Grammar
Each theme is complemented by grammar activities that are based on the subject matter so that they are contextualized rather than seen in isolation.
Note - This year, teachers have created their own activities, using class sets of texts and photocopied worksheets. The plan is to eventually create complementary vocabulary and grammar booklets for each theme, that can be used as a common base by each teacher, and will enable the program to meet the requirements of Standard III, 'Grammar and Mechanics' in Language Arts.
American History
Every effort has been taken to ensure that US History runs as a thread throughout the entire course. The themes require case studies and these studies are specifically chosen with a view to contextualizing content such as Exploration, Colonial Government, The American Revolution, First Nations, Immigration and the Space Race.